Best 292 quotes in «tennis quotes» category

But every step of Williams’s career has been shadowed with the sort of resentment that emerges whenever someone unsettles the status quo in an effective and unapologetic way. Put differently, when she stirred the pot, a whole lot of bullshit rose to the surface – and her refusal to try to perfume its smell has made her unruliness all the more potent.

By batting a ball back and forth over a net one forgets all one's worries, one even forgets about death.

Ciò che rende speciale qualcosa non è quel che si vince, ma quel che senti di poter perdere.

Ho attraversato una grande estate, poi ho perso quella partita. Mi ha spezzato il cuore. Non mi sono mai sentito così solo sul campo o più deluso dal gioco.

During a match, you are in a permanent battle to fight back your everyday vulnerabilities, bottle up your human feelings. It’s a kind of self-hypnosis, a game you play, with deadly seriousness, to disguise your own weaknesses from yourself, as well as from your rival.

Except in a very few matches, usually with world-class performers, there is a point in every match (and in some cases it's right at the beginning) when the loser decides he's going to lose. And after that, everything he does will be aimed at providing an explanation of why he will have lost. He may throw himself at the ball (so he will be able to say he's done his best against a superior opponent). He may dispute calls (so he will be able to say he's been robbed). He may swear at himself and throw his racket (so he can say it was apparent all along he wasn't in top form). His energies go not into winning but into producing an explanation, an excuse, a justification for losing.

Fifteen love,' Chris said in a strong, clear voice as he set up for his next serve, and Elizabeth sensed that in addition to announcing the score, he was sending her a special message. A message about love...

Ho la sensazione di essere stato messo a parte di un piccolo, ignobile segreto – vincere non cambia niente. Adesso che ho vinto uno slam, so qualcosa che a pochissimi al mondo è concesso sapere. Una vittoria non è così piacevole quant’è dolorosa una sconfitta. E ciò che provi dopo aver vinto non dura altrettanto a lungo. Nemmeno lontanamente.

Hai visto che bella libertà?” Lui ha capito. Io poi mi sono messo a pensare a questa faccenda delle righe del campo da tennis, che danno claustrofobia. Il giocatore costretto a mettere la pallina sempre dentro la riga, ma non solo dentro la riga, ma più vicino possibile alla riga, ma più vicino vai alla riga più corri il rischio di mettere la pallina fuori dalla riga, cosa che è veramente angosciante e ossessiva e claustrofobica. E le righe sono sempre quelle e io lo so che i giocatori la notte vanno a dormire, chiudono gli occhi e vedono le righe, lo so che vedono righe ovunque e stanno attentissimi quando camminano a non calpestare le righe tra i blocchi di pietra dei marciapiedi, o del parquet, o delle mattonelle, che è difficilissimo. E non possono mai stare fermi a guardarle quelle righe: vanno su, vanno giù, ma non si fermano in mezzo al campo a guardare intorno perché c’è l’arbitro che gli dice “tempo!”, cosa che è ossessiva, claustrofobica e un pochino malvagia, secondo me. Tutto questo a mio figlio grande non l’avevo detto, gli avevo solo detto quella cosa sulla libertà. Il resto avrebbe dovuto capirlo da solo: che differenza c’è tra noi e i tennisti? Poca roba. Noi abbiamo le righe che ci siamo disegnati da soli e fatichiamo a non tirare fuori troppe palline. Se vuoi uscire dalle maledettissime righe – e dio solo sa se ci ho provato – arriva l’arbitro e fischia il fallo e ti porta dritto in galera. Poi ci sono quelli che dicono che quando ci si accorge che le righe sono troppo strette bisogna mettersi d’accordo tutti per spostarle. Oppure ci sono quelli che dicono che è inutile spostarle: è il concetto stesso di riga a essere sbagliato. E allora via, togliamo le righe. Ma io mi chiedo – e non è che io sia stato tanto a rispettarle quelle righe lì – una volta tolte, come si fa a giocare? Insomma io a mio figlio grande gliele direi queste cose, visto che è chiaro che passa giornate intere a discutere di quelle maledette righe coi suoi compagni dell’università: spostarle, cancellarle o che ne so io.

His chief form of entertainment was reading. The last moments he was in a cabin were usually spent scanning bookshelves and nightstands. The life inside a book always felt welcoming to Knight. It pressed no demands on him, while the world of actual human interactions was so complex. Conversations between people can move like tennis games, swift and unpredictable. There are constant subtle visual and verbal cues, there's innuendo, sarcasm, body language, tone. Everyone occasionally fumbles an encounter, a victim of social clumsiness. It's part of being human. To Knight, it all felt impossible. His engagement with the written word might have been the closest he could come to genuine human encounters. The stretch of days between thieving raids allowed him to tumble into the pages, and if he felt transported he could float in bookworld, undisturbed, for as long as he pleased.

I didn't cry when they buried my father - I wouldn't let myself. I didn't cry when they buried my sister. On Thursday night, with my family asleep upstairs, my eyes filled as Agassi and Marcos Baghdatis played out the fifth set of their moving second-round match.

Humility is the recognition of your limitations, and it is from this understanding, and this understanding alone, that the drive comes to work hard at overcoming them.

[In high school] my interests outside my academic work were debating, tennis, and to a lesser extent, acting. I became intensely interested in astronomy and devoured the popular works of astronomers such as Sir Arthur Eddington and Sir James Jeans, from which I learnt that a knowledge of mathematics and physics was essential to the pursuit of astronomy. This increased my fondness for those subjects.

I like pros, especially when it comes to tennis and rent boys” — and here I’m really wondering if the pun on prose consolidates Bruce’s feeling toward it versus poetry under the sign of sex, which Bruce sometimes pays for, in order to direct us toward the pleasure of its use-function when monetised, a pleasure seldom associated with poetry, and one that might lead to the company of more pros. He continues: “If I can get a twofer, and the trick looks like Rafael Nadal, I’m in heaven.

In any game, the game itself is the prize, no matter who wins, ultimately both lose the game.

I've internalized my father- his impatience, his perfectionism, his rage. I no longer need my father to torture me. From this day on, I can do it all by myself.

I sometimes rented a car and drove from event to event in Europe; a road trip was a great escape from the day-to-day anxieties of playing, and it kept me from getting too lost in the tournament fun house with its courtesy cars, caterers, locker room attendants, and such — all amenities that create a firewall between players and what you might call the 'real' world — you know, where you may have to read a map, ask a question in a foreign tongue, find a restaurant and read the menu posted in the window to make sure you're not about to walk into a joint that serves only exotic reptile meat.

It may well be that we spectators, who are not divinely giftes as athletes, are the only ones truly able to see, articulate and animate the experience of the gift we are denied.

[Lizzie Bennington to a reporter who has asked for her opinion about Jack Archer's celebrated thighs.] “When you come back from a set down and bring the match to a final set tiebreak and are a point away from winning the match, only to have what looks like an extremely fit player call a time out because of a cramp and then watch that player sit back and casually converse and laugh while you do your best to keep your mental focus and your body moving so you don’t grow cold and cramp yourself, I hardly think you’d concern yourself with his burgeoning manhood, let alone his thighs!

Quel che rende speciale qualcosa non è quel che si vince, ma quel che senti di poter perdere.

No one ever asked me if I wanted to play tennis, let alone make it my life. My father decided long before I was born that I would be a professional tennis player.

Ortho Stice played with a kind of rigid, liquid grace, like a panther in a back-brace.

Put differently, the rhetoric of Williams’ different body isn’t just sexist – it’s profoundly racist.

Were you serious when you said I might win someday at Wimbledon?" Claire answered, "There's so much that's pure luck, good or bad. The weather can be terrible. We always say we should re-schedule Wimbledon and hold it in the summer!" I frowned. "Wimbledon is in the summer." Claire sighed. "It's a joke, Fiona." "Oh.

She felt about a love set as a painter does about his masterpiece; each ace serve was a form of brushwork to her, and her fantastically accurate shot-placing was certainly a study in composition.

The day you give priority to bogus ethics over human reactions, you become a loser. Human reactions are priceless. Rules should never, ever stifle emotions. Tennis is a very human game facing a great danger that it will be strangulated in a cat's cradle of unnecessary or inhumane rules.

Unlike other players – who arrived at the sport because their class and place in society afforded them the possibility – the Williamses fought their way in. Any victory from that point forward would not be out of luck, or proximity to privilege, or pedigree. It would be through sheer strength, work, and will.

Some books have too much tennis. Some books have too much baseball. Some books have too much boxing. Some books have too much horse.

The Williams sisters had something else: each other, and their absolute dominance.

Well, with that filly in my line of vision blushing like a virgin, something in me was bound to stand at attention. And my walking legs were occupied.

Williams’s trashiness is the opposite of the tennis image: to be sexy, to admit you have a body, to wear things that are flashy or sparkly, all of it flies in the face of the traditional tennis idea, which corresponds with that of upper-class America.

What if, when Tracy Austin writes that after her 1989 car crash, 'I quickly accepted that there was nothing I could do about it,' the statement is not only true but exhaustively descriptive of the entire acceptance process she went through?

You know how when you step on court your coach is like "go go go!"? And all throughout you just keep telling yourself to hit harder and harder and keep at it? You know how much you treasure those five-minute timeouts? You know how good you feel at the end of a session? You know how you're glad you're tired? No pills, no shots, just plain energy. I want to work like that. Whether I have to write ten thousand words or send five hundred emails, brainstorm for hours at a time, I want to have that energy. To keep fighting. To know it's all worth it. Oh, yeah. That's my perfect day.

All teenage girls like to look good and tennis players are no different.

You’ve got to go through hell... Before you get to heaven... Let’s do 10 more

You want to speed up the game, don't let the ball go out of bounds.

Andrea Jaeger plays tennis like she's double-parked.

A lot is yet to be enjoyed. I'd like to stomp grapes for wine. Go to Antarctica. Have dinner with Venus Williams who is the greatest tennis player ever.

Always staying focused is something that's been very tough for me. I'm still working on it.

An otherwise happily married couple may turn a mixed doubles game into a scene from Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf.

As tennis players, you are never satisfied. We are greedy as players, always want better results.

Anything over-handed, I do left-handed. Like throwing a ball or serving in tennis. Otherwise, right-handed, like writing and shaving.

A smile is a curve that can straighten out a lot of problems.

A thousand books on tennis won’t improve your serve, but a thousand serves will.

As you know, I was one of the original grunters. But Jimmy Connors used to grunt way before I was born. I never knew I was grunting, it was just part of my strokes.

A surgeon might want to be the best surgeon in Manhattan, but out on Long Island on the weekend, not care at all how he is on the tennis courts or on the Ping-Pong table. Even turning your competitiveness off when it's appropriate, when other people are not being competitive, to recognize that social circumstance and, you know, cool it. That's a crucial competitive skill.

A traditional fixture at Wimbledon is the way the BBC TV commentary box fills up with British players eliminated in the early rounds.

Borg's won Wimbledon four straight times and out there he has just lost an 18-16 tie breaker. You'd think maybe once he'd let up and say forget it. But oh, no way.

At Wimbledon, the ladies are simply the candles on the cake.

Black people playing tennis, next white people will be tap dancing!